The aim of the SENSATION project is to develop a new capture technology for low CO2 concentrations from air and low industrial CO2 emissions. The main challenges with low-concentration CO2 capture are high costs and that the current industrial methods are not energy efficient enough. Because of this, there is currently no capture technology available for industries with low CO2 concentrations in the exhaust gas, even though the cumulative effect of these is significant. In order to achieve the climate goals, technologies for capturing low-concentration CO2, including both capture from air and from industries with low CO2 concentrations in the exhaust gas, must be implemented on a large scale.
In the SENSATION project, we will reach our goal of an energy and cost-efficient technology that efficiently captures low concentration CO2 by optimizing both the solid material, adsorbent, that captures the CO2 as well as optimizing the process configuration. Since there are large volumes of gas that need to be cleaned, we will create so-called structured units where the adsorbent material is coated on a supporting structure. By using these structured units, we can pass more gas through the system more efficiently and thereby the whole process can be intensified and further the structured units have great mechanical strength. They are made as modules and can therefore be put together like bricks until the desired size of the capture system is achieved. When well-structured units have been produced and tested on a lab scale, we will develop a model for the process that includes the characteristics of these units. The model will be able to give us answers about the energy efficiency and operating economy of the process. After optimizing both the adsorbent materials and the process configuration, we will build a larger test facility (so-called pilot scale) for more industrial-like test conditions. The latter is important in order to be able to scale up to efficient, large facilities, with capture of CO2 on a million-ton scale.
The overall objective of SENSATION is to develop a sorbent-based carbon capture technology tailored for low CO2 concentrations varying from 400 ppm in air (Direct Air Capture, DAC, application) to 1-3 vol% for industrial sources. This will be achieved by 1) Validating scalable, commercially available sorbent materials that have high capacity and selectivity at low concentrations of CO2 and have a long-term stability; 2) Structuring sorbents by coating the sorbent material onto a substrate monolith. This includes selection of a substrate and a coating process of the sorbent to maximize bed density while lowering the pressure drop and thereby reducing the cycle time; 3) Designing a compact system with optimized temperature swing adsorption (TSA) and vacuum temperature swing adsorption (VTSA) processes to reduce energy and capital costs; 4) Techno-economic analysis to link the experimental development to large-scale design; 5) TRL6 demonstration of the developed technology at two industrial locations to test carbon capture both at very low (from air; via DAC) and low CO2 concentrations (from industrial off gas). Lessons learned during the operation will be used for implementation at scale; 6) Life cycle assessment to identify which key indicators need to be addressed to limit the environmental impacts of the technology, and to assess social impacts; 7) Exploitation, including activities on commercialization and scalability, yielding a roadmap for commercial deployment by 2030.